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Big Brother In the Home Office

Posted by timothy on from the where-the-raspberry-pi-comes-in dept.

hessian writes with this excerpt from the New York Times' "Bits" column: "Tens of thousands of programmers, writers, accountants and other workers labor at home doing contract work for companies like Google, Hewlett-Packard and NBC. The computers they use contain software that takes snapshots of what they are doing six times an hour. The snooping occurs randomly, making it impossible for the computer user to game the system. It is probably more invasive than what happens to those working in offices, where scooting through Facebook entries, shopping on Cyber Monday, and peeping at N.S.F.W. ('Not Safe for Work') Web sites on corporate computers is both normal and rarely observed by managers."

12 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Use another PC for private stuff!

    1. Re:So... by AdrianKemp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am assuming that any company so paranoid that they're logging everything the employee is doing would be equally as batshit crazy about unexplained lulls in activity.

      I'm very suspicious about the "cannot be gamed" thing... it's software, ffs.

    2. Re:So... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Use another PC for private stuff!

      It's not just about making sure you're doing nothing private, but also to make sure you didn't take a half-hour to have a cup of coffee or take your hand off your keyboard to think about the best way to solve a problem.

      Is it finally sinking in that corporations really don't care about your well-being, or even about what's best for the company, only profits are important? And if achieving another .2% of profits this quarter requires you to have a 50% worse quality of life, they're going to throw you under the bus every time.

      Problem is, there is absolutely no "free market" solution to this. There is no "free market" solution to your declining real income and your diminishing quality of life. They are thrilled with high unemployment because that means the workers are too scared to do anything but bow their heads and take it.

      Today I read an article in Bloomberg about how so many working and middle class people aren't doing quite as badly as we thought because they're taking second jobs for cash and more mothers and kids are working to pick up a little extra cash so they can survive month to month. And the article said that this was all a good thing. No mention of the corrosive social effect of people with two full-time jobs sleeping a lot less, or more kids not having any parents at home until late into the evening. No mention of the fact that the second jobs tend to be at or below the minimum wage. No mention of health care costs increasing because of additional stress.

      There was actually a quote about how working 16 hour days for $8 bucks and hour is just as good as working 8 hours a day for $16/hr. They pointed out that the diminishing place of organized labor has made these wonderful "productivity innovations" possible.

      Sometimes I have trouble believing how quickly we went from being a nation where people commonly believed that their children would have better lives to a nation where there is certainty that our children will have worse lives. In my lifetime we have gone from a country where the working and middle classes believed that if they just worked hard and took care of their families that they would have a few good years of retirement to enjoy, to a country where everybody knows that the 401k is only going to hold us for a year or two, and then...well then we just don't know (and that's if you could afford to put away money for that 401k). When all those 401k babies start to retire and they realize there's no where near enough money to live there is going to be social displacement like we've never seen.

      We have become a feudal oligarchy where it's considered a great thing that a skilled worker - a professional - can be monitored every ten minutes to make sure they don't get up to go to the bathroom or change their toddler's diaper. This is "thinking outside the box". These are "innovative management tools".

      By the way, when Hewlett Packard (one of the companies using this 10 minute monitoring system) fired their former CEO Leo Apotheker for not really doing that great of a job, they made sure his transition was eased by $7 million cash and $18 million in stock. This is the CEO that they fired while telling their workers that they all have to tighten their belts. Oh, and they structured the "firing" so that Mr Apotheker could file for unemployment.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    3. Re:So... by pmc · · Score: 5, Funny

      Tell me - would you turn in a fellow programmer for, to pick an example at random, making unapproved changes to a production network, such as adding an old hub to a network?

    4. Re:So... by lexsird · · Score: 5, Funny

      Sweet Jesus I feel your pain in this post. I seen a quote yesterday that made me think and laugh at the same time. It went something like this. "In the 80s Capitalism defeated Communism. In the 90s Capitalism defeated Democracy." I chuckled at the truth of it.

      You are right, there is no "free market" solution, the rich will only get richer and the poor, poorer until there is only two classes at their extremes. The "slash n burn" system of capitalism has trashed this nation and everyone connected to it. We need to revive industrial capitalism and start playing as Team USA. Multinational interests have too much power in our country that compete with our best interests.

      It all rests in Washington and the ability to legally bribe politicians. It is the ONE subject you will not hear any damn one of them talk about with any depth or conviction. It's a big fat trough of money and if you get there, you are setting high on the hog. The little people's interests get crushed under these big wheels.

      These dumb fuckers forget that their entire nation is build on the little people. If you choke them down and out, you eventually choke yourself down and out as well. But greed and the nanosecond fast computer age, with lightning fast trades has made Wall Street just another Vegas. Wall Street was for long term investments and long term existence. People made a sturdy, dependable system that was solid and provided well for everyone. But the smart kids learned that the easy money was in financial mathematics. If you think engineering physics formulas are convoluted sometimes, you don't want to dabble in the math of finance.

      This is where it gets interesting. Factor this: On an average day with all things being equal; the bad guys can sometimes get one over on Regulators. Now lets tweak this formula. Let's diminish the Regulators and boost the bad guys. What do you think the probable outcome that will result from that will be? Take an educated guess if you will.

      I know, it's easy to spot, and it's low hanging fruit if you are solving our problems. There is a more serious problem that we have to deal with. This problem needs solved if magically we solved our corrupted financial system. I am referring to our broken trade policies. Our trade negotiations aren't just weak, they are criminally negligent with an ill bent towards the United States. The world has discovered they can just buy our politicians like the corporations can and we allow ourselves to get BURNED in trade deals.

      We need a "Mirror Policy" with the world. If we can't sell it to you, then you can't sell it to us. It's simplistic as hell, and would be damn effective and fair. I wish one side would wake up and capitalize on it. They can have it, they can take credit for it. It's theirs, just do it so that we can get back on track.

      Lastly we need fewer politicians and more representatives. We need people who are beyond approach to step up and take the wheel. Are you telling me, these nasty things we have in office are the best we can do? I can throw a rock out my window and hit better people than what's "representing" us in Washington these days.

      I wish some slash dot contributors and commentators would run for office. There are some damn intelligent people that frequent these pages, this is why I come here and wade through the retards, is for some great gems, some really bright minds come here. Why the fuck aren't some of you running for office?? Yes you could do it, it's not just a dream. Far, far worse people in life have climbed high in political office. We need damn thinkers, intelligent people capable of dealing with the ever shifting playing field of advancing technology. The world is moving at the speed of light these days and you can't be fucking around or it will run you over.

      'nuff said.

      --
      Take the Red Pill.
  2. Humm, not possible to game the system ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What about the other (personnal) computer next to the work computer ?

  3. Why would anyone tolerate this? by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand why anyone would tolerate this. I've done remote work for decades, since long before the internet made it possible to access client's source repositories or documentation sites as you can now. I've never had my billable hours questioned, and have always delivered quality software in the end.

    I'd be so insulted to have a client even suggest such an intrusive back-handed accusation that I'm ripping them off that I would immediately leave the negotiating table with a pair of digits waved on high as I headed out the door.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    1. Re:Why would anyone tolerate this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly the above. People with no sense of their work's worth and no self-respect are willing to submit to degradation in order to get jobs that don't pay well, and when they lower their personal value it lowers the businesses' perception of the value of each and every one of us.

  4. If you're measuring productivity that way by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...you're doing it wrong. Lines of code, keystrokes per hour, etc. are almost universally shitty metrics. Your teleworkers are hired to do a job. Take the time to figure out how to effectively measure that, and then realize that intrusive steps like those in TFA are worse than useless.

  5. Re:Webcams too by Synerg1y · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is clearly an invitation to work in the nude.

  6. Re:Intolerable! by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 5, Informative

    You should read the article. For 1/6th the cost of an hourly wage (same rate snapshots are taken at), you can blank out an image. That seems fair to me, since you don't pay for the times when it didn't catch you, so your pay will approach the actual amount of time you spend working.

    You get to keep your privacy, and your pay. As long as there's a way to disable the software (and, presumably, not get paid) what's the problem?

    --
    <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
  7. Re:You are at work... by preaction · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Part of my job is knowing how to program efficiently and effectively. This involves perusing websites, twitter feeds, wikipedia, personal blogs, news sites and other easily-misinterpreted content. I should not have to justify every single web request I make. I should not have to ask, before each decision to click a link, "Is this good for the Company?".